


A Fool for Sacrifice

by maharieel



Category: Mass Effect, Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: F/M, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, these two are going to ruin me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-05
Updated: 2017-05-05
Packaged: 2018-10-28 08:26:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10827537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maharieel/pseuds/maharieel
Summary: Maybe there was no proper reason, except that he’d been faced with tumbling into Tartarus for good and she hadn’t been entirely enthused with the notion of having to drag him back up.(or: a rewrite of zia's confrontation)





	A Fool for Sacrifice

**Author's Note:**

> for the prompt: have you lost your damn mind

In retrospect, she should have anticipated that someone once involved with a man like Reyes was going to be a piece of work. The man didn’t exactly inspire good morals or honour, but where was it Sidra’s right to blame him for it? The only way to survive in the pit was to hammer yourself into a shape that disappeared amongst the shadows, dents and cracks be damned, and she thought Reyes did a rather splendid job of masking such consequences in the light.

Still, she should have known that Zia – ex or not – would be trouble. The trap and resulting ambush would have been an entirely predictable embarrassment if only Sidra hadn’t been . . . distracted by a certain pair of swirling whiskey eyes and flop of hair.

The woman was entirely the kind of woman Sidra had expected someone like Reyes to tumble with, with enough bravado and sexuality to carry her out of orbit. She found herself assessing the woman not out of emotion pangs but out of curiosity, wondering if Reyes had really been that predictable.

 _He is flirting with me,_ she supposed, giving him the side eye as he bickered with Zia. At least the man did appear to have some semblance of standards when it came to who bore the brunt of his sexual innuendoes.

Sidra let Reyes deal with the talking, content to stand beside him with crossed arms and wait for Zia to either drop dead or fuck off. Behind her, Sidra could almost _feel_ Drack’s pacing and the sound grated on her the longer she was forced to listen to the two smugglers argue. It wasn’t until Zia spat something mildly insulting at Reyes that Sidra cleared her throat.

“Shut the fuck up,” Sidra snapped. “What do you want?”

Reyes seemed to shift slightly at that, but remained quiet long enough that Zia cut in again. “Your _darlings_ head on a fucking spike.”

“Oh shit,” Reyes groaned.

It was then that the guns came out.

The whole situation was entirely predictable and under any other circumstance a flare of biotics from her and Cora would have cleared half the room before anyone even had the chance to pull their respective triggers. But most circumstances did not involve a woman deranged with her desire for revenge looking down the barrel of her gun at a man Sidra had come to . . . _appreciate_ having in her life. It honestly didn’t even register that her shields weren’t fully up or that Zia was barely two metres away.

The woman pulled the trigger, and Sidra stepped in front of it.

A lot of things collided at once: the blast sent Sidra slamming backwards into Reyes, an armour piece flung off from the impact, as a wave of pain burst from her abdomen; Zia swore aggressively, aimed to fire again before being all-but crushed by a wave of azure energy tossed from Cora’s wrist with power enough to rival an Asari Matriarch; and Drack detonated a grenade within the cluster of guns-for-hire Zia had wrangled into coming at her back, the resulting smoke cloud consuming the wreathing mass of burning bodies. Within seconds the room had been desolated, smoke and eezo clinging to the air like lost souls clung to a life raft at sea.

Sidra was being partially held up by Reyes when her knees buckled. The force of the impact had shoved them back against the crates haphazardly positioned around the room, and she felt him manoeuvring her to lean back against one. She couldn’t see or hear anything except for SAM’s voice in her ear, something about shrapnel damage and blood loss almost registering with her pain-riddled mind, but focused on the rattled breaths being dragged out of her. She left the AI to physically hold her together.

“ – gel!” a voice screamed.

Something warm grabbed Sidra by the chin and her face was jerked to look into a pair of dark eyes, blonde hair swinging at the edge of her distorted vision. Cora held her gaze for a moment longer before loosening her grip slightly.

“Just breathe, Ryder,” she said, voice entirely too calm. “Concentrate on breathing.”

Another voice, the same one as before, rattled to Sidra’s left and on instinct she reached her hand in that direction. Barely seconds after the motion, her trembling fingers were wrapped in a much larger hand, callouses rubbing against her palm. The contact sent tendrils of warmth up her wrist.

More hands, on her abdomen and in her hair and resting against her thigh as the seconds ticked into minutes into what felt like hours, before the haze finally lifted to reveal Cora still holding her gaze intently. SAM chirped up again, clearer than before. “Pathfinder, I have sealed off the wound to allow Ms Harper to apply medigel.”

Her voice clawed against her throat. “And?

“You are in a stable condition, although I would advise being given a further medical examination by Dr T’Perro back on the Tempest.”

“Which you’re not getting out of,” Cora said, the ghost of a smile lingering at the edge of her mouth. The expression slid away as she lifted her gaze to look at something to Sidra’s left, mouth setting in a thin line and the makings of a frown creasing her brow. There was a moment when Sidra was sure the woman wouldn’t relent to whatever she was fighting against, but a moment later a sigh reverberated through Cora and she dragged herself to her feet.

The padding of her receding footsteps led to silence. Sidra turned her head and spied a familiar head of dark hair in the corner, eyes trained intently on her through the darkness. It wasn’t until Reyes pushed himself off the wall and made to move from the shadows that she noticed her blood on his hands.

Her eyes followed him as he walked over and eased himself down next to her against the crates. He seemed smaller than usual, all hunched with down-cast eyes, and Sidra didn’t know what to do. He saved her the trouble of having to come up with something smart to say, voice nothing but a bitter rasp as he asked, “Have you lost your damn mind?”

Maybe she had. Maybe any sense of logic and strategy had dissipated from her mind when he’d had a gun trained between his eyes. Maybe the man did things to her, improper things that left her wide eyed and forced to explain to SAM why her heartrate had suddenly increased. Maybe there was no proper reason, except that he’d been faced with tumbling into Tartarus for good and she hadn’t been entirely enthused with the notion of having to drag him back up.

“Cora probably thinks so,” she said instead, her heart having been battered enough for one day.

Reyes didn’t laugh. “Ryder . . .”

“She was a bitch and she was going to shoot you,” she said, cutting him off. He let her do it. “She would have torn out half your innards, with that so-called armour.”

He scoffed, eyes falling to rest on the distant figures of her companions. “Says the woman missing half her armour and being held together by an AI.”

“Touché.”

Sidra seemed to win him back a little with that, the corner of his mouth curling as he turned to face her again. He looked like he’d been the one that’d been shot. A wave of self-consciousness suddenly hit her.

“I look like shit, huh?” she asked, letting out a breathy sigh.

The way a laugh slipped from him was answer enough. She tried to hit him on the leg but only managed to drop her hand against his thigh, the action getting his attention nonetheless. Reyes lifted his hand and begun tracing his finger along her jaw, the sensation making her skin spark. Even through the grime and sweat he still managed to smell like the crap whiskey of Tartarus.

“Thank you,” he whispered, lips so close she breathed his words. “For what you did.”

She forgot the dryness of her throat. “Your welcome.”

He consumed her then for the first time, mouth on hers, and it was nothing she had expected of someone like Reyes. The gentleness, mostly, shocked her for a moment until she got entirely lost in the taste of him on her tongue, on her lips. One of his hands found its way into her hair, the other bracing him on the ground as he pulled her gently closer to him. Sidra would have punched him for treating her like glass during their first kiss, but was so thrilled by the feel of his tongue roving in her mouth that she forgot her anger.

A grunt across the room forced them apart. Sidra saw Drack shake his head in the corner of her eye as he made for the door, but kept her eyes on the way Reyes’ lips had swelled a little and a dark flush had moved into his cheeks. She bit down on her lip and watched as his eyes dropped to the bloodied mess that was her chest with a dark look. With what little strength she had managed to keep a hold of, Sidra leant over and pecked him on the lips again for good measure. Reyes was smirking at her by the time she leant back against the crates.

“Well, I think we better get going,” she said, voice barely audible.

Reyes held her gaze. “Right.”

“Before they leave us behind.”

“Wouldn’t want that, would we?” he quipped.

After another moment of just staring at each other Reyes stood and carefully _(oh, so carefully)_ heaved Sidra up beside him. Her legs almost buckled but she felt SAM readjust her systems with a strange sensation of numbness. Reyes stood frozen to the spot for a moment, eyes cautiously on her until she smiled up at him with a nod. He helped her limp outside, the orange hues of the Kadaran sky enveloping them as they left the bloodied bunker behind.


End file.
